Happy Birthday Papa....

16th June 2013, an ordinary day like another and yet holding a special relevance to me. Most would know that it is the Father’s Day today, but apart from this, it also happens to be my father’s birthday. Come to think of it, most of the times it is hard for me recall my own birthday...and yet there are some days which are significantly imprinted in my mind, papa’s birthday being one of them. It obviously happened many years before I was born and logically speaking since I was not there to witness the event, it shouldn’t be as important to me. And despite this, somehow 16th of June seems to hold an unusual place in my heart, same as my does my mother’s birthday and their anniversary.

The only plausible reason I can gauge for this is that I owe my being to these dates. It is only coz of my parent’s birth and their subsequent marriage that I live and breathe; and that I think would be the cause of my fascination with these days. This year the coinciding of 16th with father’s day makes it all the more momentous to me.

Father’s Day as per Wikipedia is ‘a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society’ and ‘was inaugurated in the United States in the early 20th century to complement Mother's Day in celebrating fatherhood and male parenting.’ Although if you ask me, I really don’t feel that there was any need to dedicate a specific day to honour fathers, or even mothers (not because it is not worth it, for of course it is). No day can really denote and represent in totality what the parents are for a child and what the child is to them; and nor can showering love on your parents for one single day of the year make up for all those other days when you might have neglected them. And regardless of this moral preaching, I am not in the least immune to the trend.

Moving on from dates and days, lemme now speak on the man whose presence makes them worth speaking about. All of us without a doubt love our parents a lot (not speaking of some less fortunate ones) and I’m no exception. When I think back to my childhood, the first memory of papa which comes to me is him carrying me around, while I stood on his feet and the next would be him and mummy singing lullaby’s together for my brother and I. There are many others which flash before my eyes in a jiffy, overwhelming me with all sorts of emotions entangled together. These are moments when I’ve loved him to death and also simultaneously, instances when I’ve hated him with the same intensity. Loved- that is understandable after all I’m talking about my dad; I am bound to love him obviously. But it is not just this social binding which makes me love him; it has more to do with the sort of a person he is, kind-hearted, generous, intelligent, caring and the list goes on. (I won’t dwell deeper on it, as coming from me this might sound more of a self-praise than anything else.) Hatred- now this is not something about which I should be proud of, and I clearly am not. Harboring such negative emotion towards him, even for a second has been a mistake, a grave one at that. Albeit on second thoughts, each child during his/her growing period must have gone through these phases of revolts and rebellions, all without a cause; and each of them must have regretted it in the same manner as I.

Dad has definitely always been the best father I could have ever dreamt of...I on the other hand have never quite been the daughter he would perhaps have wanted. And despite all my imperfections, temper, laziness, lethargy he does not love me any less. Sometimes I even feel he loves me a little more than my brother, a fact which is denied fervently no doubt, but (sorry Addy), the denial does not make it any less true.

They say that a father is his son’s first hero, and daughter’s first love. All I would like to say is that for me, dad is not simply my first love but also very well fits the bill of being my first hero (perhaps the last one too).

There would be many more father’s day and many more birthdays, but for this once, I want to make him a promise, a promise to fulfill all the dreams he has seen for me, all the aspirations he has catered since the day I was first placed in his arms, a promise to achieve what many would deem unachievable. And though I’ve been told many a times by dad himself that I shouldn’t aim at attaining something just because he wants me to, I don’t think any accomplishment of mine would be devoid of a desire to first please him……after all at the end of the day I would always be Daddy’s little girl.

Man Re...Kaahe Tu Na Dheer Dhare........

With end term examinations fast approaching, like any sensible person, I should have been stuck up in some corner of the hostel with a book in my hands, mugging up the innumerable topics that have inconsiderately been included in the never ending course. But no! What I am actually busy doing is listening to melancholic love songs and mulling over something which should otherwise have had no effect whatsoever on me. (Wait, love songs do not mean that this write-up is about a heart break or something……definitely no. My heart is very much with me and in one piece, thank you very much.)

So getting back to the point, I was not indulged in the activity which was expected of me and was lost in another sphere with countless thoughts reeling in my mind- thoughts about love, thoughts about life, thoughts about friendship, thoughts about hurt, thoughts about anger, and thoughts about this immature guy who with his absurd behavior had triggered this entirely worthless array of thoughts.

Who was this guy to me— and the answer rolls off the tongue without second thoughts – absolutely no one. Did he hold any importance?? Did I care?? Puhlease! These questions in themselves sound ridiculous. Why would I? He did not matter to me, not even a teeny weeny bit. He was just an inconsequential person who due to my failure at doing something more fruitful had occupied the otherwise empty quarters of my brain; the only problem now being, he was refusing to buzz off. It’s not that I did not try, that I did to the level best. Went out for a walk, took a shower, watched an episode of my favourite sitcom, read a page or two of a novel, and even opened the history notebook and counted the number of chapters that would be coming for the exam; and darn me to hell; nothing worked. What was about this person which had made him a permanent guest in my otherwise very peaceful and un-happening life! He was no Shah Rukh khan or Tom Cruise which would have made me go all gooey over him, nor was he among the likes of Brad Pitt or Zac Ephron who with their uber hot appeal had made me swoon and go weak in my knees whenever I watched then on the television or laptop screen, neither did he possess that massive intellectual prowess (the kind which Cleopatra has been known to use to her advantage to seduce her men)……..and yet here he was in all ordinariness capturing a large part of my mind.

As I was involved in my own world, I heard my room partner calling out to me, asking me to explain the ‘garden leave clause’ to her, and thus breaking the chain of thoughts that had engaged me for quite some time. Out and about from the la la land, I picked up the Contract book and tried to clear her doubts. And whilst doing so it suddenly occurred to me that this guy would definitely not be the one who would be writing my papers for me. Sadly enough, I would have to do that myself…..(oh! how I wish there was a way out.) Pushing him to the backburner, I got up and picked up the history notes once again and started going through Pitts India Act of 1784 (mugging up is such a torture).

The guy would be popping up in my thoughts every now and then, after all, any day he was a better topic to think over than why these Englishmen attempted judicial reforms, when they made the same mistake each time they tried. But despite being a more fascinating subject he’d have to wait, since I had no intention of failing and repeating the semester. Hopefully the exam pressure would consume me and I’d forget all about the episode and the desire to know why I wasted so much of my time on him would slowly subside. Because as Thomas Gray brought to the world’s notice ‘ignorance is bliss’, pure and unadulterated bliss if you ask me…..and hence, some things are oft better left unsaid and undone.

Audi Alteram Partem

16th December 2012 rings a bell in the minds of most of the Indians. It brought forward one of the most vicious and inhumane faces of our society when a 23 year old girl was brutally gang raped in Delhi. Thirteen days later the girl succumbed to her injuries while undergoing treatment for brain and gastronomical damage in Singapore.

Although hard to believe, this inexcusable and nasty offence also seemed to a have a bright side to it. People came out of their houses to protest against the sad state of affairs in our country and against the atrocities faced by women. The words Jagriti, Amanat, Nirbhaya and Damini became synonymous with the girl, who lost her life to one of the most sadistic offences imaginable, and became a wake up call for the society, as well as for the government.

In continuance with this social phenomenon, the Saket Bar Association openly stated that ‘none of its members would defend the men accused of the crime that united India in anger and grief, corroborated by large protests in cities like Delhi.’ Their refusal was approved of and was lauded by the people and also by the media. None denied its praiseworthiness and flak was drawn towards those who came forward to defend the accused. Such an act however ethical it might have seemed to a bystander, in truth, was perceived by me as a blatant and absolute misconduct and breach of professional ethics.

It was not for the first time that such declaration, of not defending people guilty of committing heinous offences, was being made. Earlier during the trial of the Mumbai terror attack, not only the lawyers from the Bombay bar association refused to represent the accused, but the bar association also passed a resolution banning the lawyers from taking up the case of Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone militant arrested in the Mumbai terror attacks. Abbas Kazmi, the lawyer who was appointed to defend Kasab, faced accusations and had to seek police protection. One of the most eminent lawyers in India and former Union Law minister, Ram Jethmalani, has also faced criticism, both by the public as well as the legal community, for defending the accused in various high profile cases like the Indira Gandhi murder case, Rajeev Gandhi murder case (2011), Jessica Lall murder case, among many others.

In the Delhi rape case, the lawyers are not only publicly refusing to defend the accused, but are also protesting against those who took up the case, calling them ‘publicity seekers’ and allegedly creating ruckus in the courtroom, which forced the Hon’ble Judge to retire to her chamber.

The public is in support of this decision by the association and is happy with the hostility being shown towards the lawyers defending the accused. To them, the defense counsel in this case, is as much a party to the offence as the six people who have been indicted of committing it. Being governed by their sentiments, these people are forgetting the widely acknowledged legal principle Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat; ie; innocent unless proven guilty. The burden of proving the guilt of a person lies on the state and this must go through a proper process of presenting all the facts and examining each witness and evidence carefully. It is not for social media, blogs, and news channels or even for the police to establish a person’s guilt unless the evidence has been tested in a Court of Law. For this procedure to be carried out in a proper manner the primary criterion is that both the parties get a chance to present their facts before the Court. The maxim, Audi alteram partem, which stands for ‘hear the other side’, comes into play now. It is most frequently used to refer to the opinion that no individual ought to be judged lacking a fair trial in which each party is provided with the chance to counter to the substantiations in opposition to them. This maxim is considered one of the principles of natural justice, which are the most fundamental doctrines of the legal system in almost all democracies. Keeping the same in mind the Constitution of India under Article 22(1) provides that an accused shall not be denied the right to consult with, and be defended by a legal practitioner of his choice.

It is to uphold this very tradition of the legal system that the law provides for free legal aid to an accused who cannot appoint a counsel for his defense; a fact which has been reiterated in cases like Khatri and others v State of Bihar and Hussainara Khatoon and others v State of Bihar. The Hon’ble Supreme Court in Hussainara Khatoon held that "the right to free legal service is clearly an essential ingredient to a reasonable, fair and just procedure for a person accused of an offence and it must be held implicit in the guarantee of Article 21 and the status under constitutional mandate to provide a lawyer to an accused person if the circumstances of the case and the needs of justice so required."

Although seemingly impossible in the case at hand, it is quite probable that an innocent person might get framed for an offence s/he is not guilty of. It would, in no universe be justified to punish that person in the absence of a fair trial, only to appease the public sentiment. There is no dearth of cases in which the innocent were punished, even executed, due to the lack of proper investigation. Some notable among them are Wayne Felker, Thomas and Meeks Griffin, Timothy Evans, Derek Bentley, Quysiletu, et cetera. If one of the parties does not get legal aid to put forth its arguments and an in absentia decision is passed, it would make a mockery of the legal system of our nation.

More so over, a lawyer is not allowed the liberty of flowing with the mob mentality. It is his duty and the obligation towards his profession to take up a case which comes to him, without caring about how it affects his reputation. The Bar Council of India under Section 49(1 )(c) of the Advocates Act, 1961 says that ‘it shall be the duty of an advocate fearlessly to uphold the interests of his client by all fair and honourable means without regard to any unpleasant consequences to himself or any other. He shall defend a person accused of a crime regardless of his personal opinion as to the accused, bearing in mind that his loyalty is to the law which requires that no man should be convicted without adequate evidence.’ This in no way means that he is not allowed refusing to take up a case, but he is barred from speaking the fact out loud and proudly proclaiming how he fulfilled his moral obligation.

When a lawyer states publicly that he won’t defend a particular person, and stops others from taking that case either, he does nothing but cheat with his profession. And when we commend him for this act, instead of condemning it, we too do nothing but cheat ourselves, our society, and the values enshrined with it. What example do we set if we fail to comply with the judicial requirements put forth in the law? Guilty or not, a person has the right to argue his case and be represented in the Court. Once we make an exception from this due process and punish someone, even though his guilt is prima facie established (as with the Delhi rape case), all we would come across as is a failed democracy, a barbaric nation. As a law student, it is my firm belief that such an action of ours would be as heinous as the crime committed by those who dared break the law. The offenders raped that innocent girl, and we would be doing nothing short with the law of the land.